中国石化新闻网讯 据世界石油8月25日报道，墨西哥国家石油公司在7月底宣布将更加注重定期地披露其温室气体排放量，但给投资者留下了更多的疑问，而不是答案。该公司随后拒绝讨论为何从4月到6月，其温室气体排放量同比飙升了两位数。
越来越多的国有石油公司正面临来自外国股东和投资者的压力，要求跟踪并减少碳排放，墨西哥国家石油公司就是其中之一。与私人控股的同行不同，这些石油公司的主要股东是政府，这使得一些风险更大或更具实验性的选择变得遥不可及。
全球风险咨询集团Control Risks全球研究副总监乔纳森?伍德(Jonathan Wood)表示，国有石油公司在进行投资或业务战略调整方面的灵活性较低。例如，他们不能简单地出售高排放资产。他们的任务是最大限度地增加政府收入，并确保廉价国内能源的稳定供应。他们通常在有价格控制或其他旨在达到这些结果的措施的市场开展工作，这与国际石油公司所面临的情况非常不同。
各钻井公司面临的挑战也不尽相同，其中一些公司在实现可持续发展目标方面远远领先于其他公司。虽然每家石油公司都有自己独特的驱动因素，但绝大多数公司的行为将取决于政府的经济和政治战略。
欧洲国家能源公司，如挪威的Equinor ASA，由于欧洲的财富和雄心勃勃的气候承诺，在可持续发展方面名列前茅。与此同时，沙特阿拉伯国家石油公司沙特阿美(Saudi Aramco)自两年前首次公开募股(IPO)以来也加快了步伐。该公司不仅面临来自外部投资者的压力，还得到了沙特王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼的推动，他的2030愿景改革计划旨在使经济多样化，为后石油时代做准备。
即便如此，沙特阿美仍落后于国际石油巨头的发展步伐。彭博社的一项调查显示，今年年初，该公司将其排放量少报了50%。尽管该公司后来表示将改进报告，但在今年3月，其承认两家全资资产没有被包括在其2020年度报告的排放统计中。沙特阿美坚持只披露其控制的资产的排放量，不包括炼油厂和化工厂的多家合资企业。
与此同时，在较贫困地区，政府控制的石油生产商面临着更大的压力，需要在可持续发展目标与国家经济需求之间取得平衡。在极少数情况下，比如哥伦比亚最近决定将一家电力传输公司出售给其国有钻井公司Ecopetrol，而该公司的目标是到2050年实现净零排放，这两种需求可能会同时出现。
毫无疑问,这是出于财政考虑。哥伦比亚2012年至2018年财政部长，现在的哥伦比亚大学全球能源政策中心的高级研究员毛里西奥·卡德纳斯（Mauricio Cardenas）表示，这是由财政部推动的，因为需要确保额外的收入以减少疫情期间激增的财政赤字。如果事情以正确的方式进行，实际上可能有助于Ecopetrol实现其净零目标。
更常见的情况是，发展中国家的经济和可持续发展目标并没有那么协同。例如，由于墨西哥石油公司的炼油厂缺乏从最初将原油转化为汽油过程中留下的污泥中提取清洁燃料的技术，因此也增加了高污染燃料油的产量。这个国家的炼油厂生产的汽油越多，他们需要的清洁燃料就越多。
墨西哥能源部长Rocio Nahle在接受采访时表示:“我们当然在增加燃料，虽然打算逐步停止生产，但我并不担心，我在墨西哥中部重新配置了几家炼油厂，将于2023年完工。”
随着国际海事组织(International Maritime Organization)要求使用污染更少的燃料，墨西哥国家石油公司一直在向国家公用事业公司联邦电力委员会(commission Federal de Electricidad)廉价出售燃料油，供其工厂燃烧。联邦电力委员会每天从Pemex购买约4.5万桶燃料油。根据彭博新能源财经(BloombergNEF)计算，将发电厂从天然气转换为燃油会多产生16%的二氧化碳。同样，在巴西，由于干旱导致水电短缺，巴国油增加了燃料油的销售。
国家石油公司也从正在剥离化石燃料业务的国际巨头手中吸收了更多的石油资产，例如墨西哥石油公司计划从荷兰皇家壳牌公司手中收购德克萨斯州的Deer Park炼油厂，该公司于5月宣布了这一计划。然而，伍德指出，如果他们被迫对外国司法管辖区的环境法规做出回应，可能会对其国内业务产生连锁反应。
并补充道:“如果你必须为一家总部设在美国的大型炼油厂报告温室气体排放，这就需要全面的机构管理能力和战略发展知识。对许多这样的公司来说，下一步不只是要弄清楚目标应该是什么，而是要如何量化和衡量这些目标，并切实改善业绩。”
墨西哥国家石油公司报告称，几个月内发生了两起海上平台爆炸事件，最近一次发生在周日，造成5人死亡，减产了约四分之一的常规产量，该公司正受到越来越多的审查。早前7月的爆炸引起了墨西哥湾的一场大火，引起了国际社会的关注。能源咨询公司IPD拉丁美洲董事总经理约翰?帕迪拉(John Padilla)表示:“在他们的季度报告中，要表明他们正在处理ESG问题，需要的不仅仅是一张幻灯片报告。”
分析人士表示，改善国有石油公司碳足迹的主要途径是国际社会鼓励发展中国家减少排放。Rystad Energy的数据显示，国有石油生产商的石油供应占全球石油供应的一半多，到2050年这一数字可能会达到65%，考虑到这一点尤为重要。据《彭博资讯》(Bloomberg Opinion) 9月份的一份报告估计，未上市的国有化石燃料公司的排放量占全球排放量的20%左右，另外19%的排放量来自上市的国有石油生产商。
卡德纳斯认为，这种激励可以采取融资的形式。,除非他们的政府完全致力于减排目标。这些公司真正采取强硬立场的唯一原因是融资成为了问题。
王佳晶 摘译自 世界石油
原文如下：
State oil companies begin their own moves toward carbon neutrality
Pemex left investors with more questions than answers after it announced in late July that it would be disclosing its greenhouse gas emissions on a more regular basis — then refused to discuss why they’d soared by double-digits from April to June, compared to a year ago.
Pemex is among a growing number of national oil companies facing pressure from foreign shareholders and investors to track carbon emissions and reduce them. Unlike their privately held peers, these oil companies’ main shareholder is the state, putting some riskier or more experimental options out of reach.
State oil companies “have less flexibility to make investments or strategic changes in their business,” said Jonathan Wood, deputy global research director for Control Risks, a global risk consultancy group. They can’t simply sell their high-emitting assets, for instance. “Their mandate is to maximize government revenues and ensure a stable supply of affordable, domestic energy. And they are often working in markets where there are price controls or other measures designed to achieve those outcomes, which is very different than what international oil companies face,” said Wood.
The challenges among state drillers aren’t uniform, either, and some are far more advanced than others in meeting sustainability goals. While each oil company has its own unique set of drivers, the vast majority of them will behave according to their government’s economic and political strategy.
European state energy companies, such as Equinor ASA in Norway, are among the top oil firms for sustainability due to Europe’s wealth and ambitious climate commitments. Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Saudi Aramco, meanwhile, has also picked up the pace since its initial public offering two years ago. Not only is it facing pressure from outside investors, it’s also getting a push from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose Vision 2030 reform plan aims to diversify the economy in preparation for a post-oil future.
Even so, Aramco is several steps behind the international oil majors. It understated its emissions by as much as 50% at the start of the year, a Bloomberg Green investigation revealed. Although it later said it would improve its reporting, in March it acknowledged that two wholly owned assets were not included in its emissions tally for its 2020 annual report. And Aramco has stuck to revealing emissions only from assets it controls, excluding multiple joint ventures in refineries and chemical plants.
In poorer regions, meanwhile, government-controlled oil producers face greater pressure to balance sustainability targets with their countries’ economic needs. On rare occasions — such as Colombia’s recent decision to sell an electricity transmission company to its state-controlled driller, Ecopetrol, which is aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050 — the two may coincide.
“There is no doubt that the intention was fiscal. It was driven by the Ministry of Finance because of the need to secure additional revenues” to reduce a fiscal deficit that has soared during the pandemic, said Mauricio Cardenas, Colombia’s finance minister from 2012 to 2018, who is now a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “But if things are done in the right way, this could actually be helpful for Ecopetrol meeting its net zero targets.”
More often, developing countries’ economic and sustainability targets aren’t so synergetic. In Mexico, for instance, because Pemex’s refineries lack the technology to extract cleaner fuels from the sludge left over during the initial process of turning crude into gasoline, they’ve also wound up increasing their output of highly polluting fuel oil. The more gasoline the country’s refineries produce, the more extra fuel oil they need to find a home for.
“Of course we are increasing fuel oil,” Mexico’s Energy Minister Rocio Nahle said in an interview. But the government intends to “phase out” production as it reconfigures several of its refineries in central Mexico, finishing by 2023. “It doesn’t worry me,” she said.
With the International Maritime Organization now mandating the use of less-polluting fuel, Pemex has been selling its fuel oil cheaply to the state utility, Comision Federal de Electricidad, to burn at its plants. CFE buys about 45,000 barrels of fuel oil a day from Pemex, Nahle said. Switching a power plant from natural gas to fuel oil generates 16% more carbon dioxide, according to BloombergNEF calculations. Similarly, in Brazil, hydroelectric power shortages due to drought have led Petróleo Brasileiro S.A to increase sales of fuel oil to use for energy.
National oil companies are also absorbing a greater chunk of oil assets from international majors that are divesting their fossil fuels business, exemplified by Pemex’s planned takeover of the Deer Park refinery in Texas from Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which it announced in May. If they’re forced to respond to environmental regulations in foreign jurisdictions, however, that could have a ripple effect on their domestic business, noted Wood.
“If you have to report on greenhouse gas emissions for a large U.S.-based refinery, that becomes an institutional capability and knowledge that you may want to transfer elsewhere,” he said. “The next step for many of these companies is not just figuring out what their targets should be, but how they are going to quantify and measure against them, and actually deliver performance improvements.”
After Pemex reported two offshore platform explosions in as many months — the latest of which occurred Sunday, resulting in five deaths and a cut of about a quarter of its typical production — the company is under increased scrutiny. The earlier explosion in July caused a fire on the Gulf of Mexico that captured international attention and approbation. “It's going to take more than a power point slide in their quarterly presentation to say that they're handling ESG issues,” said John Padilla, managing director at energy consultancy IPD Latin America.
The main way to improve state oil companies’ carbon footprints is for the international community to incentivize developing countries to reduce emissions, analysts said. This is all the more important when you consider that state producers contribute just over half of today’s worldwide oil supply, a figure that could reach 65% by 2050, according to Rystad Energy. Unlisted state fossil fuel companies are responsible for about 20% of the world’s emissions, and another 19% of global emissions comes from listed state-controlled oil producers, according to estimates from a September report in Bloomberg Opinion.
That incentive could take the form of funding, according to Cardenas. Unless their governments are fully committed to emissions targets, “the only reason these companies will actually take a strong stance is if financing becomes an issue,’’ he said.
